The invention relates generally to closures and more specifically, to closures for bottles and other vessels.
It is well known in the art to provide a closure for a vessel, such as a bottle container. For example, a bottle includes an open top end, such as in the form of an open mouth. Objects, such as pills, are typically loaded into the bottle container via the open mouth end for storage therein.
There is a desire to provide a closure for the container to protect the contents therein from water, heat and other elements and to maintain the contents in a single organized location. There is also a desire to use a closure to prevent unwanted access to the contents of the container by certain individuals. For example, there is a need to provide a pill container that includes a child-resistant cap to enclose the contents and to keep children from gaining access to those contents.
Closures for such containers are available in many different types and configurations. For example, a cap can be provided that simply snaps onto the mouth of the container to close it off. However, these caps are frequently difficult to use, particularly by elderly users, and are not child-resistant in nature. There have been many attempts in the prior art to provide a cap that is easy to open by adults but is difficult to open by children.
Prior art closures address the foregoing problems by providing some type of locking arrangement between the cap closure and the body of the bottle container. In many prior art locking closures, the cap is attached to a portion of the bottle by threading, such as to the neck where the cap is rotated relative to the bottle so that the aforesaid locking arrangement can engage for locking and disengage for unlocking. It should be understood that the term “threading” may be construed to be any type of securing structure that locks the cap to the bottle. Such a structure may be threading the form of helical threads or protrusions that engage with seats to form the desired locking.
To carry out these prior art constructions, the cap commonly includes female threading to threadably receive the male threading about the mouth of the bottle container. The female threading is typically provided 360 degrees about the inside of a wall or on a downwardly depending skirt to engage with the male threads on the bottle closure. For the 360 degree threaded member on the cap to receive the male threaded bottle mouth requires that the overall dimensions of the cap be large enough to carry the 360 degree female threading. In that connection, since there is also a need for a fairly large mouth opening, such as 1.0 inch or 1.25 inches, for example, to accommodate automated filling machine, the overall dimension of the cap must be very large, such as about 50 mm in diameter. Therefore, employing known locking constructions, the size of the cap must be fairly large thereby making the overall container quite large. However, large cap closures are more bulky to carry and are also aesthetically unattractive.
Therefore, there is a need to provide a locking arrangement for a bottle and cap closure device that enables the cap to be smaller than prior art devices yet be able to secure the same size opening in the bottle container.
There is also a need for a bottle and cap closure device that includes a structure for securing the cap to the bottle.
There is a further need to provide a bottle and cap closure device that is relatively easy to open by an adult but includes child-resistance to deter access to the contents of the bottle by children.